Background
A large portion of business emissions come from day-to-day activities like energy use, travel, and waste management, which are often influenced by employee behaviours and are difficult to control. Working with Decerna, we designed a suite of tools, activities and communication materials for small businesses to use to bring their employees on the journey towards net zero. With help from our teacup character, Brew, our practical toolkit supports businesses to make small, achievable changes at floor level to help build a culture around sustainability and achieve wider organisational emission targets.
Insight
Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) make up 99% of UK businesses and collectively play a significant role in the transition to net zero. Whilst they are often well placed to act quickly and adapt, they also face unique challenges. Busy schedules and limited resources mean new initiatives need to be simple, practical and reflect their day-to-day work in order to stick.
SMEs cover an incredibly diverse range of roles and work environments, so we knew a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn’t work. To best understand how we could create tools that truly reflected the needs of different workplaces, we spoke to a panel of businesses - including a nursery, alpaca farm, deli, and air conditioning company, to name a few - to understand what their friction points were when it came to achieving net zero and engaging their employees on sustainability.
We learned many of the emissions SMEs are trying to reduce come from everyday activities - heating and cooling at work, travel and commuting, or purchasing and waste management. Alongside these conversations, we carried out desk research and collaboratively landed on 15 specific priority sustainable workplace behaviours to tackle, based on ease of adoption, business readiness and environmental impact. This gave us a clear, evidence-based foundation for building tools that are relevant and achievable for busy SMEs, under 3 categories:
Intervention
Our insight clearly pointed to the need for tools that were easy to adopt by businesses, whilst also working across different brands and voices. We didn’t want to create a dense set of rules or give busy SMEs too much information to read. We also didn’t want employees to feel like they’re being told off at work or for employers to seem out of touch. This led us to creating a character as our messenger for the toolkit: Brew.
Brew is warm and approachable, designed around the one relatable thing that brings together all types of business: having a tea break.
Brew fronted our practical package of tools, posters, prompts and interactive materials that form the toolkit. There are 29 tools in total, supporting our 15 priority behaviours, and our toolkit recommends businesses select a small number of relevant behaviours to adopt in the workplace, in a way that suits them best.
Some of the tools include:
- Door and window stickers as visual prompts to keep closed when the heating is on
- 'Carpool match’ survey to find another employee to carpool with
- A ‘fueling good’ quiz to test knowledge on fuel saving tips when driving for work
- A ‘local audit’ activity to help businesses shop local and independent where possible
- Recycling stickers for soft plastic and battery collections
Plus, the toolkit included an evaluation guide and survey businesses can use to track and measure behaviour change.
Implementation
Decerna have led the trialling process and have been showcasing the toolkit online and at in-person events in the Tees Valley. They have delivered train-the-trainer sessions to 17 businesses and are currently gathering feedback as tools are implemented.
In an initial trial of the toolkit, a small business reported the toolkit helped them deliver staff-led campaigns on energy conservation, changes to internal procurement processes to include sustainability considerations, and more.